jules1476 Loc: Fort Worth, TX

Thanks all, for the responses.

I forgot to check my iPad last night for it's size, but I do shoot in RAW so that probably won't work out. I will need to physically connect since internet in Cuba is hit or miss, mostly miss from what I hear. And, I don't want to have to worry about finding it - I like to disconnect when on vacation, although being able to upload to the cloud if I stumble upon it would be nice.... I may end up just taking lots of SD cards....

I am lucky to be traveling there with a my past photography professor. She has taken a sabbatical from teaching this past year in order to go down and document the changes occurring there. She has been 6-7 times so we shouldn't get too lost and she has some great places to take us. I am making a list of the places you all have suggested too though!

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

I was born and raised in Cuba although I have lived more here than I did there. I left the country in 1962 when things were beginning to get tough. I have not returned but I still remember many things.
First thing first. DO NOT eat anything sold by street vendors. Be careful with salads. Be ready to buy "health insurance" and to get like 87 cents in exchange for your dollars.
Casa Particulares and Paladares (where to stay if not at a hotel and places to eat) are pretty good and safe. Bodequita del Medio was a popular place for Ernest Hemingway to visit. His old house is a museum.
Beautiful sunsets are seen from El Malecon. The El Morro fortress is a very popular spot. If you like music and ballet there are excellent conservatories all over Cuba worth a visit. Street photography is at its best but be advised that many street characters charge for posing. Santeria is a religion pretty popular among Afro-Cubans. If something is going on make sure you attend. There is a beautiful orthodox church in La Habana that is very photogenic.
Valle de Vinales in Pinar del Rio province is very popular and beautiful. Trinidad is the oldest city in Cuba and it is worth a visit.
I am sure that there are local guides that you can hire.
Enjoy your trip and bring back many memories of that trip.

JeffR Loc: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

I just bought a RAVPower FileHub Plus on Amazon for $40. It is small and light-weight, it has an SD card slot and a USB port for a thumb drive or external hard drive, and it doubles as a wireless travel router and a 6000mAh external battery pack. You control the file transfer with an app on your cell phone, and you can view your pictures on your cellphone to verify successful copy. It appears durable and with this there will be no need for a laptop or internet connection to back up your pictures. I've tested it a couple of times and it seems to work as advertised. I've purchased several other RAVPower electronic items in the past from Sunvalleytek via Amazon and have always been impressed with the quality of their products and their customer service.

Selene03

I recently was in a fairly remote part of Mexico with only an Ipad and a camera. I used the Apple SD to lightning adopter with no issues. I shot in raw plus jpg and both transferred, though it is possible I was only seeing the jpgs. It did copy both, however, as something corrupted the SD card (maybe salt water), and I would have lost all the photos had I not backed them up on the Ipad. It was a bit of a bitch though because the Ipad has such limited storage capacity (the one I was old and had the maximum memory you could get at that time so it wasn't the cheaper one people usually buy but it was very limited in what it would hold). I had to delete just about everything on it to hold the photos. I tried to move them to Dropbox, but the wifi connection was never good enough to make that work. (I understand wifi is even worse in Cuba). I do have icloud storage, but it has its limitations as well.

So, I would recommend getting the adapter and taking the ipad (and I agree with those people--get an Apple one, they are only about $30.00 or so). I also think the idea of the Western Digital Passport Pro with built in WiFi and SD slot as a second form of backup is the way to go. The ipad worked for me, but only with a lot of effort, and I am glossing over various glitches. But I like looking at photos to see what is working and what isn't. For real backups I wish I had had the WD with the builtin WiFi and SD. And, again, I am so glad I had backed up the photos or I would have lost some very interesting pictures.

jwestman Loc: Grand Rapids, MI

Not sure what the purpose of transferring to your iPad might be but I'll throw my 2 cents in from personal experience as a traveling amateur. We went to Cuba on a humanitarian permit from the State Dept. before it was opened for U.S. travel. It was an incredible trip and you will immediately see endless photo opportunities. Since there was so much to see and do in such a short period of time, I chose not to try to waste time transferring files and post processing. I'd suggest that you'd be better off living in the moment. I took two 64gb cards and two 32s more than enough for the 2300 + raw & jpg files that I came back with. We just did a river cruise in Europe to celebrate our anniversary and I used the same approach. I probably would not have lived to see another anniversary if I spent the evenings fooling around with photo files. Enjoy the trip - you will be amazed!!

jules1476 Loc: Fort Worth, TX

That is what I am starting to think...I don't want to spend a lot of time while there messing with it all. I was mainly thinking about transferring to iPad as a backup and then if I hit some wifi I could send up to the cloud. I wouldn't do any PP there...

Martino Loc: Northwest Florida

I use an iPad exclusively when traveling, and it's not a big storage iPad. I use the Apple lightning to SD card reader. Really easy.

I upload Raw files to Apple Photos. Then, as I use Lightroom Mobile, the LR uploads immediately to LR. If I've got a good internet connection the files go to Adobe CC. If the net connection isn't great it doesn't matter as the files remain in LR. I then copy or backup the files from Apple photos to a Sandisk iXpand drive. Once on the iXpand, I can delete the files from Photos (always remembered to delete the 'recently deleted' photos too). That frees up the space on the iPad. I keep the files on the SD cards until I get home too. On LR Mobile, remember to empty the cache and that will reduce space too.
The kit needed (SD to lightning adaptor and iXpand drive) takes up minimum room. There is no need for a laptop, external drives or any associated power packs, adaptors or anything similar. You have a number of redundant back ups - Camera SD Cards, iXpand Drive, Lightroom Mobile, Adobe CC and if you want, you can upload Apple Photos to iCloud too. Even if you don't have a decent internet connection, you still have the SD cards and the iXpand at the very minimum.
All this means you can still do post production using the iPad too.
I regret that too many people see problems with using the iPad in this situation, when there really are very few. It's worked for me for quite a while.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Yes, SD cards are cheap and you don't have to worry much about them. Just put them in a safe place because they are easy to misplace.

Selene03

When I was commenting on loading files to an Ipad in Mexico, I eyeballed them to see what they looked like quickly, I did no post-processing, which I would never try to do on an ipad anyway. The point I was trying to make, was that by having photos backed up, I didn't lose anything when my sd card failed. I only use very high quality cards, and this is the first and only one that failed, but it didn't matter because I had the raw photos backed up, and while it was something of a pain to get them off back home, I had all the pictures. It shocked me that the card failed, but it did. Such incidents are very rare, I don't know how many cards I have used, but it did happen. Just as a precaution, I just back stuff up either before I go to bed at night or in the morning while others are taking showers. It really doesn't get in the way of the experience.

george19

I've started using the Lightning to USB female connector, running straight from the camera through its supplied 'to USB' cable. No issues, especially with power needs, but you won't get the RAW files.

Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.

Its been 65 years ago since I was stationed at gitmo Cuba. Batista was in charge back than. He was in bed with the mobs that controlled the gambling. Much later when Castro took over he sent them packing. That's when they all settled in Nevada.

genesampson

I have used this FileHub to transfer photos. It creates its own wireless connection and can transfer to the iPad wirelessly or copy to a drive connected via USB. Also is a power charger, tho haven't used that function. Works for me.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AQUMZRA?psc=1